Tuesday marked the beginning of another gunnery and FARP for me. This wasn't a normal gunnery where the pilots go out and qualify though. We are only doing it to give an infantry unit some air support to go along with a field exercise they are doing. It's been pretty cool the last few nights. I have been able to watch them assault a mock village, seen tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles shootings and seen a lot of artillery exploding.
These are the M1A1 Abrams tanks rolling up to the village with some Humvee's behind them.
This is the mortar team that is set up about 50 yards west of our position. It's pretty cool to see them shoot. You can watch the mortar go straight up into the clouds for about 10 seconds but then you have to wait about a 40 seconds for the round to impact due to it's serious hang time.
Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
You can't see it but that flame is from a Abrams tank firing just behind the ridge line. That's some serious firepower.
Prepare to fire!
Fire!
Prepare to fire again!
If you enlarge the picture you can see the soldier holding the next round ready to drop in. The mortar is almost as big as his torso.
This is one of my favorite pictures because if you look closely you can see a big flame hidden inside the smoke.
The impact area downrange. This was the result of the mortars firing.
I've been watching thing like this the last few nights now along with the Apache giving some air support with it's 30mm cannon and rocket volleys. And to think, I'm at work!
5 comments:
Very, very cool! I suppose it would be different if someone was shooting back!
Nice "about me" pic, very tough.
Great pictures! I'm glad you are enjoying this and like Dad said - I'm glad no one is firing back!
That is very interesting, we saw a mock cannon firing once and that shook your insides I bet this is way worse!!!
I bet you are in your glory with all this. For me, it's hard to believe that this is in Colorado, it seems like something out of a movie...
Hope you're doing well!
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